Have you ever wondered what the founders of the United States would say about cryptocurrency? Given their views on paper money, I get the sense they'd be hodling bitcoin. 🇺🇸
Warning: 🔥 takes from the Early Republic below. 👇
Before the American Revolution, the colonies used many different forms of money, including European specie (money in the form of metal coins), personal lines of credit, IOUs, and paper bills issued by banks and governments.
To address the shortfall, they printed paper money backed by loans from individuals, banks, and foreign nations.
Thus, the saying: "not worth a Continental."
After the war, the US had to repay its debts.
So, Congress and many states started experimenting even more with paper money.
Here's what a few of the founders had to say:
"To emit an unfunded paper as the sign of value ought not to continue a formal part in the Constitution, nor ever here after to be employed;..."
"I never have heard, and I hope I never shall hear, any serious mention of a paper emission in this state. Yet ignorance is the tool of design and is often set to work suddenly and unexpectedly."
"[T]hey may pass a law to issue paper money, but twenty laws will not make the people receive it. Paper money is founded upon fraud and knavery."
"Paper money is unjust; to creditors, if a legal tender; to debtors, if not legal tender, by increasing the difficulty of getting specie. It is unconstitutional, for it affects the rights of property, as much as taking away equal value in land...."
"Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice."
"This is a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money. The mischiefs of the various experiments...are now fresh in the public mind, and have excited the disgust of all the respectable part of America."
"[I]f I had a voice in your Legislature, it would have been given decidedly against a paper emission.... I contend that it is by the substance, not with the shadow of a thing, we are to be benefited...."
"I shall therefore only observe...that so many people have suffered by former emissions, that, like a burnt child who dreads the fire, no person will touch it who can possibly avoid it."
"[T]hese general reasons will be found true with respect to paper money; that experience has shown that in every state where it has been practiced since the Revolution, it always carries the gold and silver out of the country and impoverishes it."
"[T]he trifling economy of paper as a cheaper medium, or its convenience for transmission weigh nothing in opposition to the advantages of the precious metals; that it is liable to be abused..."
Still, as they intended, it often feels as if they're talking to us directly:
"I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
I'd like to think Jefferson, an inventor, would approve.
So let's all enjoy the holiday, and then let's get back to work! 🎇🇺🇸🎇
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She says historians will accuse me of taking these quotes out of context, but I think I can handle it. 🚀